Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2022 February 24

= February 24 =

The Great Gatsby 1974 movie poster font
What font is used on the movie poster and is there a freely available version for Windows? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:15, 24 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi It's one of the Deco fonts, maybe Rousseau Deco. If you Google "deco fonts" I'm sure you'll find it.--Shantavira|feed me 09:23, 24 February 2022 (UTC)


 * I tried identifont.com but the closest it came up with was Chalet London 1970, which it says did not exist until 1994. --184.144.97.125 (talk) 09:25, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I suspect that in 1974, titles were not computer generated. If it wasn't hand drawn it may have been from Letraset or something similar. Alansplodge (talk) 09:42, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I think it's related to Bauhaus (typeface). Windows comes with "Bauhaus 93", which actually has the same oblique S glyphs as in the poster, but it is only offered in an unpleasantly bold weight, with square terminals, so it seems very different. I found a free clone of Bauhaus, but the poster's typeface has a flat bar on the lower case e, and the dramatic s, both missing from Bauhaus: and anyway this clone is still a bit too heavy, and the gaps in certain characters (the idea seems to be to avoid ever creating a counter) are so narrow that they might as well not be gaps. And it has square terminals, which make the gaps even less perceptible. So I think there's a better one out there somewhere. Card Zero  (talk) 11:14, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The majuscule B on the poster is more like that of Bauhaus 93 than that of ITC Bauhaus, which looks confusingly like a German ß. It appears, though, that the majuscule S in Bauhaus 93 is less slanted than the S on the poster, while the majuscule E and R on the poster are more like that of ITC Bauhaus. The minuscule e of the poster does not really conform to either variant. Although there is no perfect fit, the indebtedness is clear. --Lambiam 15:07, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Link to hi-res image --Verbarson talkedits 13:55, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I see now that the poster's B is actually more like that of ITC Bauhaus. Where ITC Bauhaus and Bauhaus 93 diverge (imagining a light weight for the latter), the shape of the characters on the poster is mostly more like ITC Bauhaus. Notable exceptions are the M and N, which have sharp angles at the ends of the verticals for ITC Bauhaus, but smooth arcs on the poster and for Bauhaus 93. Next to the minuscule e, the poster disagrees with either of the Bauhaus typefaces for the characters A and 4. The horizontal stroke of the A is closed on the poster, but open (at different ends) for both Bauhaus typefaces. The 4 on the poster is also closed, but open (in different ways) for both Bauhaus typefaces. --Lambiam 16:12, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I wondered what you were ßanging on about, but you're usually right about everything so I didn't want to contradict. And I already linked to a high-res version of the poster, but I guess I should have made that clearer. I wasn't linking to the article about posters! I now have a (very specific) curiosity about where the slanty S in the 1974 poster, repeated in the 1993 font, originates from. Could it just be parallel evolution, or is the typeface in the poster something that was in widespread use and has since been forgotten? There must be large numbers of forgotten typefaces from the 20th century (a lot of them used in movie credits/intros/posters), I wish they could all be rescued from the encroaching mists of time and preserved as ttf. Card Zero  (talk) 18:20, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry, missed your hi-res link --Verbarson talkedits 00:02, 26 February 2022 (UTC)